Bjørn winner!

What can you write about Ole Einar Bjørndalen that hasn’t already been said? The man is a legend! He is the King of Biathlon and the best biathlete of all time. He has won about a million medals in his 100 year career (slight exaggeration but it feels like that sometimes!)

Ole Einar Bjørndalen was born in Drammen, Norway on the 27th January 1974 although he now lives in Austria. He won his first junior medal in 1992 and made his debut on the World Cup in 1993. To cut a long story short he then went on to win everything there is to win! He has a record 11 Olympics medals in biathlon, he has won the overall title six times and has more World Championship medals than he knows what to do with!

An unbelievable career which will culminate in his last ever biathlon season this year. He has announced that he will hang up his biathlon skis at the end of this season after competing in his 6th Olympic Games. He will be 40 years old by the time Sochi comes around and if he keeps his fitness up he will surely be able to add to his medals haul in the Norwegian relay team.

Strangely for an older athlete Bjørndalen has maintained his ski speed but seems to have suffered more with his shooting. Really you would expect the opposite to happen, the legs to go before the eyes. Hopefully he will maintain this for next year but unfortunately I can’t see him winning any individual races. The likes of Fourcade, Svendsen, Bø and Shipulin are just too strong for Ole to compete with now.

What I would love though is for someone to fire up the flux capacitor and get the DeLorean to take these guys back to around 2002 and see them compete against Bjørndalen at his best. What a race that would be! And you could even throw in Raphaël Poirée and Sven Fischer just to add some more spice! However until time travel is actually invented it will just have to be raced in my head, but who would win?

Well you can’t look past Bjørndalen. At his peak I think he could beat anyone past or present. After all he is a Bjørn winner!